akaika

budgets for consulates providing visas are not covered by the visa application fees. It isn't a money making operation. The visa rules are almost without exception reciprocal. An example of a non-reciprocal visa policy is the 30 day visa exemption for many countries. Thai citizens cannot go 30 days visa free to most of those countries. They only maintain this policy because a lot more money is spent in the 30 days visit than what the MOFA collects for a visa.

There is an hourly van for a little more than 100 baht run by Siracha Transport. The counter is ground floor near the magic food court, door 8. Nobody seems to be at the counter most times they are usually at the other counter at the transportation center. You can call the counter staff at zero-nine-zero one-nine-seven sixty-seven eighty-two. The van may or may not go to the terminal and they might tell you to take the free shuttle to the transport center. This van does not have the space in back for baggage so if it does not fit on your lap and the van gets full, you have to buy a seat for your bag. If it is nearly empty they generally don't care.

Ahh, wondered when the Koh Chang story would get mentioned in this thread. Probably a lot of differences. Read in-depth about the Koh Chang case and it just gets more and more interesting. In the end, TripAdvisor covered all of his legal costs (not saying I think they should have) but they were rather incensed about what transpired and said so publicly, Apparently they may also have felt they might be somehow responsible because while they didn't post Mr. Barnes' review, they did share it with the hotel. Maybe that explains it? And while I never met Mr. Barnes and a short time after this transpired on Koh Chang, I had not even seen or heard the story. Probably too busy with the early stages of the pandemic. But I received his resume and was a little 'shocked' when I did the obligatory internet search of the applicant. Almost more shocking than the Koh Chang event was that he had fired a gun inside a nightclub in America claiming to be a federal agent or something like that.

Besides the supposed 'outrage,' there might just might be some more fishiness to this story. Since working in marine restoration projects includes cooperating with both the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources and the parent Ministry, they have established collections stations where certain species are collected from local fisherman and then allowed to be sold and this certainly includes species of pipefish aka seahorses. "Allowed to be sold" is actually not a legal term in this case but it is happening all over the country. So anyone that wants to touch a pipefish can get one for 50 to 300 baht...

First thought is for those of us that are foreigners with children in Thailand, we will likely use our experiences to steer them. Probably most are either pensioners or working (or both). Many foreigners I meet are living comfortably of a wage that would be rather minimal in their home country. A lot get by on as low as 25K a month. So it seems that 25K might be considered a 'good wage' especially if you get it soon after graduating. That said, the prospects for university graduates to get 25K++ exist, even as soon as graduating but there are some caveats. The jobs are usually divided with one category being government and prestigious jobs that pay little in the beginning but offer guaranteed salary increases for life and often many perks such as free housing, medical coverage etc. Starting pay for a lecturer with a PhD in a government university can be as low as 18K. Government schools in rural areas are offering a 'retainer' of 5K a month until a government teacher position opens. People sometimes stay in this role for 3 or more years after they have graduated, usually because they want to or need to stay in that specific location. The other category are jobs with higher initial salary from 25K to 50K. These are by definition some type of niche job that often has an associated license or at least a qualification that is more difficult to get.

Since nobody so far has said they got refused entry, I would be surprised if you had any problems. Many years ago (10++), I went in and out once a month for almost two years, at least 19 times and they never said a thing except once. This was around the time when the immigration was first starting to get serious about visa runs overland as it was the normal way many people stayed and stayed and they wanted to change that. They changed 30 days to 15 days and made many announcements and you could read on thaivisa many reports of which border crossing was the most lenient that week and how/why people were being denied entry. But basically no comments at all about returning by air. This included a few trips to Singapore out on first flight back by 5pm. It was almost clear that the policy was officially to let people in at the airport and one reason may be that it is relatively easy to deny entry at a border crossing where a person can walk back where they came from, which is a country that has a Thai Embassy that could 'fix' the person's problem or at least give them a tourist visa. At the airport that becomes a hassle. And one last thing, you can offer a very honest reason which, in your case might be that you are waiting for the retirement money to be in the bank for 3 months...

There are many countries that have had to challenge laws that affect home brewing and craft brewing. What is unique here, (beyond unique 'bizarre' is more accurate), is that the violation was about advertising/promoting drinking. It is of course a maze of bureaucracy to legally produce alcohol for sale in Thailand but it can be done. Only one place comes to mind where the advertising/publicizing of it was the specific legal impediment; Japan. In 1990 there were fewer than 10 microbreweries because the use of the terms, "beer" "brew" "malt" were strictly prohibited except for the few major companies. There was a 'substitute' word "Happōshu" which only meant low malt but there was no reason they needed to actually lower the malt content and so it soon became a kind of 'code' that this was craft beer. By 2000 when the laws started to change, there was over 300 Japanese craft brewers at the International beer show in Tokyo. If anyone has followed this person's efforts they will know that he has actually made serious progress collecting hundreds of thousands of signatures and even having the judicial prosecutors tell him (after his conviction) that they feel he is justified in his efforts (maybe they like craft beer).

I would like to buy one of these if you are still making them

A lot of people are quoting Thai Labor Protection Act which actually does not apply to most schools. If the school is technically licensed as a school, not a business, then the law that applies is called the Labor Protection Act for Principles and Teachers (referred to as TLL for 'teacher's labor law' henceforth). The TLL has some interesting things that are worth investigating. 30 days of paid sick leave is included in the Labor Protection Act but not in the TLL. The rules about working during lunch, being assigned extra work periods and rules about working while the school is not in session are also included. As for the question relating to covid specifically, All schools since May of 2020 were required to complete a 44 item covid action plan in order to reopen. This plan included details about how the school would respond in the event they had staff, teaching or support that got covid specifically requiring them to establish policies for pay. Mainly this was for government schools to create contingency accounting plans that usually do not have foreigners working unless through an agency. So here is what can be said... If a school employee (teacher or support) has social security it is legal for the school to reduce pay 50% and the employee can obtain the other 50% from their social security. One thing is that the social security can make a determination if they will pay or not for this claim. In other words, no guarantee and it is very likely that they might deny a claim if the school/employee has not exhausted the paid sick leave for that employee. But this is not likely to remain as a policy because the reason was that this means all other sick leave afterwards would be without pay and there is no chance for social security to pay more after the covid situation. It is also possible for a school to obtain on behalf of the employee or require the employee to obtain covid insurance that will pay 100,000 baht in the event of getting covid and having lost wages. This was initially inexpensive around 5000 baht for this type of policy. In another thread, many people were also commenting about sick leave in general. It seems clear the community is not well informed of the actual policies even in the more general Labor Protection Act. Even thought this law is translated and the many addendums are too, it is frequently misread, misrepresented. Even by law firms.